Variety is reporting that Disney Channel will begin touting its Playhouse Disney to Disney Junior transition Monday, October 11 during the ‘Handy Manny: Big Construction Job’ prime-time special. The ad will feature one of several different variations of the previously introduced Disney Junior logo, this one being the individual letters in ‘Junior’ stylized after the ‘sensational six’ characters featured in ‘Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.’

According to Disney Channels Worldwide senior marketing and creative VP Richard Loomis, “Each one has sort of a fun, play-along factor. Some of the letters of ‘Junior’ are very obvious in terms of which characters they express, and some are a little bit more subtle. It’s simple, but it does have another layer.”

The so-called ‘Play and Greet’ featuring Rapunzel and Flynn Rider from Disney’s Tangled at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom is now being reported to be postponed from its original start date of October 15 until October 25.

This was confirmed by cast member extraordinaire and consistently accurate source Paul Chadkin via twitter.

Update 10/12/10 – Rapunzel and Flynn Rider will begin meeting and greeting guests (without ‘play’ elements) on October 15 as originally scheduled, but at the International Gateway in Epcot

Disney Cruise Line has released this teaser video which shows where I plan on spending most of my time when the Disney Dream makes its inaugural voyage in January of 2011, the children’s Oceaneers Club. After a couple of refreshing reminders of the concept art for Andy’s Playroom and the Monster’s Inc Laugh floor, we’re treated to the real deal (or at least what’s been put together of it so far).

Winnie the Pooh, the beloved Disney character, will star in his first ever book-based app with the release of the “Winnie the Pooh: What’s a Bear to Do?” Puzzle Book App on the App Store. The universal app, Disney Publishing’s first, delivers an immersive and interactive reading experience for preschoolers on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

On the heels of launching four critically acclaimed apps for iPad — “Toy Story,” “Toy Story 2,” “Toy Story 3” and “The Princess and the Frog,” — Disney Publishing has added new layers of interactivity to “Winnie the Pooh: What’s a Bear to Do?” and has optimized the app’s content to run on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

In 2008, Walt Disney Animation Studios announced an initiative to re-introduce the practice of animated shorts, particularly leading into full-length theatrical features due, in part, to the success of Disney/Pixar’s famed shorts lead-ins.

One of the announced projects was one that immediately caught the attention and affections of many a Disney fan, that being of The Ballad of Nessie. Directed by Stevie Wermers and Kevin Deters, the 2D short is described by the studio as having ‘art direction evocative of the Disney shorts from the 1940s and 50s’ and being ‘the honest to goodness true tale of Loch Ness and its most famous resident.’

With what should come as little to no surprise, the official Walt Disney World website has now posted a closure for Splash Mountain in January for the Magic Kingdom’s attraction annual refurbishment. Currently the site has the attraction as closing on January 3 and re-opening on February 1, 2011, but last-day-of-the-month dates are always suspect and suggest that the closure may continue on into the next month, although this is not the publicly available information at this time. Should we learn of the closure extending into February, we will update the article and note the changes via our official Twitter and Facebook pages.